Most people might know that Bob Dylan celebrated his 80th birthday on Monday past. What many might have missed, however, was the American singer-songwriter Amy Helm’s Twitter post about her late father Levon Helm on what would have been his 81st birthday.
She recounted touring the States with him 20 years ago.
Her drummer dad, she said, was “two years sober, had just filed for bankruptcy, and was one year past his radiation treatments for throat cancer.”
His voice was barely a whisper, he couldn’t sing, but instead the 60-year-old determinedly set about switching his playing style to the blues.
This anecdote’s relevant because Helm was the drummer in The Band, Dylan’s former backing group and probably one of the most underrated bands in American rock history, whose story was recounted in last night’s BBC4 network premiere of the Martin Scorsese-produced documentary film Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson & The Band.
Of five members, Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel are no longer with us, and the elderly Garth Hudson remains reclusive.
Last man left to tell the tale
This leaves their unnaturally talented guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson to tell their story, from a group of Toronto teens honing their craft with Arkansas rocker Ronnie Hawkins, to infamy as the live band Dylan went electric with, to a legacy of their own which began at Woodstock’s ‘Big Pink’ recording studio.
For fans and newcomers alike, time spent with this mesmerising group and their story can’t be recommended highly enough (the film is still on iPlayer), even if circumstances dictate that only one perspective on their triumphant but troubled story is seen.
Robertson – on whose biography director Daniel Roher based the film – was notoriously the worst singer in a group blessed with three of the great North American musical voices.
Yet his speaking voice is endlessly listenable, and it brings a mythic gravitas to a story aided by contributions from his wife Dominique, George Harrison, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen, who correctly states that “no band emphasises coming together and becoming greater than the sum of their parts more than The Band.”
And now for something completely luxurious
In the first episode of Britain’s Most Luxurious Hotels on Channel 4, meanwhile, celebrity glamour of a blander, more contemporary kind abounds, as the staff of London’s Langham (prices range from a grand to 25k per night) rush to finish roof repairs before Ronan Keating arrives, struggle to find an adaptor cable for the launch of a sex-laden podcast to celebs including Sam Fox, Denise Welch and Sinitta, and hold their breath while executive chef Michel Roux Jr judges the new, biscuit-based desserts.
This mock tension’s so much reality show guff, of course, and the whole thing was essentially a classy piece of advertising for the prestige hotel.
Yet there were some lovely human moments in there, including marketing director Charlotte nervous-excitedly pausing to tell us about her wife’s impending IVF birth, and the look on their postman’s wife’s face when the couple were gifted a 40th anniversary stay in the hotel.
The latter treat was part of a push to honour essential workers, and it was as a document of an industry trying to get back to normality post-lockdown that the show worked best.
